Octoechos (liturgy)

The book Octoechos (from the Greek: ἡ [βίβλος] Ὀκτώηχος Ancient Greek pronunciation: [okˈtoixos];[1] from ὀκτώ 'eight' and ἦχος 'sound, mode' called echos; Church Slavonic: Осмѡгласникъ, Osmoglasnik from о́смь 'eight' and гласъ 'voice, sound') is a liturgical book containing a repertoire of hymns ordered in eight parts according to eight echoi (tones or modes).

Many hymns in the Octoechos, such as Kathismata, Odes, and Kontakia are set in a strict meter—a fixed number of syllables with particular stress patterns, consistent throughout multiple verses.

One example of such a hymn is "Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον", the prooimion of the Christmas kontakion composed by Romanos the Melodist,[2] set to a melody in the third mode of the Octoechos.

Usually the arrangement of the syllables with their metric accentuation are composed as a well-known hymn tune or sticheron avtomelon within the melos of a certain echos.

These melodic stichera are called automela, because they can easily be adapted to other texts, even if the number of syllables of verse varies—the so-called prosomoia.

[note 1] The prooimion which precedes the kontakion for Christmas is recited today with a simple melody in a rather sophisticated heirmologoc melos of echos tritos; its most important part is the conclusion called "ephymnion" (in italic characters) which uses one and the same melody for all kontakia of the same echos (at the end of the prooimion as well as at the end of each following oikos):[3] Ἡ Παρθένος σήμερον τὸν ὑπερούσιον τίκτει καὶ ἡ γῆ τὸ σπήλαιον τῷ ἀπροσίτῳ προσάγει, Ἄγγελοι μετά ποιμένων δοξολογούσι, Μάγοι δὲ μετά ἀστέρος ὁδοιπορούσιν, δι’ ἡμάς γὰρ ἐγεννήθη παιδίον νέον, ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων Θεός.

[citation needed] The Great Octoechos (ὀκτώηχος ἡ μεγάλη), or Parakletike, contains proper office hymns for each weekday.

It already existed during the 6th century in the Patriarchate of Antiochia, before it became a main genre of the centers of an Octoechos hymn reform in the monasteries of Saint Catherine on Mount Sinai and Mar Saba in Palestine, where St. John Damascene (c. 676–749) and Cosmas of Maiuma created a cycle of stichera anastasima.

The earliest papyrus sources of the Tropologion can be dated to the 6th century:[7] Choral singing saw its most brilliant development in the temple of Holy Wisdom in Constantinople during the reign of Emperor Justinian the Great.

"[8]The earliest version of a Tropologion dedicated to the repertoire of Octoechos was created by Severus of Antioch, Paul of Edessa and John Psaltes between 512 and 518.

[9] The Tropologion was expanded upon by St. Cosmas of Maiuma († 773), Theodore the Studite († 826) and his brother Joseph of Thessalonica († 832),[10] Theophanes the Branded (c. 775–845),[11] the hegoumenai and hymnographers Kassia (810-865) and Theodosia, Thekla the Nun, Metrophanes of Smyrna († after 880), Paul, Metropolit of Amorium, and by the emperors Leo VI and Constantine VII (10th century) as well as numerous anonymous authors.

[17] The early prosomoia composed by Theodore the Studite for the evening service during Lenten period which belong to the Triodion book.

[note 8] After Pentecost, the singing of the Great Octoechos on weekdays continued until Saturday of Meatfare Week, on Sundays there was another cycle organised by the eleven heothina with their exaposteilaria and their theotokia.

[citation needed] Note that the Octoechos contains sufficient texts, so that none of these other books needs to be used—a holdover from before the invention of printing and the completion and wide distribution of the rather large 12-volume Menaion—, but portions of the Octoechos (e.g., the last three stichera following "Lord, I have cried," the Hesperinos psalm 140[21]) are seldom used nowadays and they are often completely omitted in the currently printed volumes.

Cyril and Methodius and their followers within the Ohrid-School were famous for the translation of Greek hymnody between 863 and 893, but it is also a period of a reformative synthesis of liturgical forms, the creation of new hymnographical genres and their organisation in annual cycles.

The school represented by Kliment of Ohrid, Naum, or Constantine of Preslav endeavoured to match the Greek text in the number of syllables in the hymns and to preserve the verse structure indicated by the corresponding neumes, but the resulting meaning of the hymns could change so considerably that, in certain cases, the only aspect the original and the translation had in common was the prescribed music, i.e., the indicated melos and echos.

As simple Octoechos they provided the hymns for the evening (večernaja molitva) and morning service (utrenna) between Saturday and Sunday.

[citation needed] In Russia the Oktoich was the very first book printed (incunabulum) in Cyrillic typeface, which was published in Poland (Kraków) in 1491—by Schweipolt Fiol, a German native of Franconia.

[33] In 1905 the Zograf Monastery published a set of Slavonic chant books whose first volume is the Voskresnik with the repertoire of the simple Osmoglasnik.

They contain stichera, kontakia all kinds of troparia and canons without being necessarily dependent on the tradition of Byzantine chant and later developments of the Stoudios Monastery since the 9th century.

[37] The reason of this independence is, that the church history of Armenia and Georgia preceded the Byzantine imperial age about 50 years and both traditions were more oriented to the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem.

This section describes Oriental and Caucasian hymnals as they have been used by Armenians until the genocide by the end of the Ottoman Empire,[38] and as they are still used among Orthodox Christians in Syria, Persia, Armenia and Georgia.

The ecclesiastical year starts with Qudosh `Idto (The Consecration of the Church), a feast observed on the eighth Sunday before Christmas (Yaldo).

The Šaraknoc' is the book which contains the Šarakan, or Šaragan (Canons),[40] hymns which constitute the substance of the musical system of Armenian liturgical chant in the eight modes.